IWG-2 Requests Further Discussions for WRC-15 Draft Agenda Items

The working group approved the first revisions for documents IWG-2/065 and 066, which address mobile broadband for the 1300 to 1400 MHz and 2700 to 2900 MHz spectrum bands, respectively, said IWG-2 Chairman and Telecommunications Management Group Chief Technology Officer Charles Rush. “The idea was that the U.S. wouldn’t be telling other regions they can’t do something with radio regulation,” Alcatel-Lucent Senior Manager Amy Sanders said. “We’re saying the U.S. and Region 2 doesn’t want it changed, but we’re not telling other regions what they can and can’t do.” “Our intent was to have a no change proposal for all three regions,” NTIA Telecommunications Specialist Charles Glass said. IWG-2 Vice Chair and Intel Senior Manager-Worldwide Spectrum Policy Jayne Stancavage said there was support for this in offline discussions.

Others had concerns with singling out one region in the proposals. “Last we checked, we don’t make airplanes that are region-specific,” Boeing Regulatory and Spectrum Management Engineer Kim Kolb said. The working group should remain consistent with its use of a soft no-change proposal, Lockheed Martin Director-Technology Regulatory Affairs Scott Kotler said. “It wasn’t until after the fact did the meeting understand the reason for a soft no change only applied to Region 2,” he said. “I don’t see how a soft no-change gets equated to only applying to Region 2.” The soft no-change seems more appropriate for a position than a proposal, said Steve Baruch, managing member of New Wave Spectrum Partners.

IWG-2 planned offline discussions on draft proposals IWG-2/067, 064, 071 and WAC/109. Document 067 focused on the 4400 to 4990 MHz spectrum band. "You can easily not pay attention to national borders” with space-to-Earth satellite use of the band, Sanders said. The signal from the satellite may encompass the territory of multiple administrations, but the station doesn't, she said. There can be International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) systems that transmit in multiple places and are still received by the satellite in space, others said.

Concerns with WAC/109 and IWG-2/071 involved proposed limits exceeding the commission’s rules, Rush said. The results of a study “are now being used as the basis for going into a resolution that has been approved by WRC-12,” he said. “That ratchets the impact of the study into a much higher level than reporting the results. That’s the reason I have concerns.” Concerns with the limits being developed and the current commission rule can be addressed during domestic implementation, Kolb said. “The issue is whether these values are consistent with FCC rules,” Rush said. “Whether the assumptions made in the report are consistent with our understanding of how IMT systems operate. There are numbers that far exceed what is the norm for LTE operations that we have in the U.S.” Those numbers are LTE cells that would be visible to the beam of a satellite’s antennas, said Wayne Whyte, NASA International Spectrum program manager. “It’s a much larger area than a single city,” he said. “That’s how those numbers get excessive.”

The group also planned to have offline discussions on future agenda items IWG-2/063 and IWG-2/069, which focus on applications using High Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS) (see 1504080046) and IMT systems above 6 GHz. Harris Wiltshire Technology Policy Adviser Damon Ladson said he wouldn't support proposal 069. The commission is looking into frequencies above 24 GHz that might be used for mobile broadband, he said. “That’s not without controversy,” he said. “Above 6 GHz there are competing users.” Others said U.K. regulator Ofcom recently finished a consultation process on spectrum above 6 GHz, which identified six potential frequency ranges to study.

Google hasn't finalized the spectrum it's looking at for HAPS use, said Tricia Paoletta, a telecom lawyer at Harris Wiltshire, representing Google. HAPS isn’t a service but a type of station, she said. “Did you have an idea what frequency ranges this would be envisioned to go into, to know where HAPS are going in the future?” asked an EchoStar spokesman. He urged Google to frame the bands with upper and lower bounds to improve the proposal. “We’re not able to list specific bands, but that’s the point of the study,” Paoletta said. Others were concerned with whether HAPS should be in the fixed or mobile service. Google plans to use HAPS for both fixed and mobile broadband, Paoletta said. “This is a future agenda item, so it’s forward-looking,” Ladson said. “We’re looking at how to make existing HAPS allocations more usable.” “There’s no band allocated specifically to HAPS at this time,” Rush said. IWG-2 documents are due to the commission May 11, Rush said. The working group will have its final meeting, a three-hour session, April 29 at 2 p.m. “We need to have positions in this next meeting,” Rush said. “Whether we all agree or there’s view A and view B.”